“
“That’s yet to be proved to me.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Hmm. Interesting question,” he said. “I could say you’ve lied before, but then we’ve already agreed not to talk about the past.”
Jenna wasn’t sure if she wanted to sigh in frustration or kick him hard under the table. This was so much more difficult than she’d thought it would be. Somehow, Jenna had convinced herself that Nick would believe her. That he would look at the pictures of the babies and somehow
All around them the clink of fine crystal and the muted conversations of the other diners provided a background swell of sound that was more white noise than anything else. Through the windows lining one side of the restaurant, the night was black and the sea endless. The shimmer of colored lights hanging from the edges of the deck looked almost like a rainbow that only shone at night.
And beside her, the man who’d haunted her dreams and forged a new life for her sat waiting, watchful.
As she started to speak, a waiter approached with a bottle of champagne nestled inside a gleaming silver bucket. Jenna closed her mouth and bit her lip as the waiter poured a sip of the frothy wine into a flute and presented it to Nick for tasting. Approved, the wine was then poured first for her, then for Nick. Once the waiter had disappeared into the throng again, Jenna reached for her champagne and took a sip, hoping to ease the sudden dryness in her throat.
“So?” Nick prodded, his voice a low rumble of sound that seemed to slide inside her. “Tell me about the twins.”
“What do you want to know?”
He shot her a look. “Everything.”
Nodding, Jenna took a breath. Normally, she was more than happy to talk about her sons. She’d even been known to bore complete strangers in the grocery store with tales of their exploits. But tonight was different. Important. This was the father of her children. She had to make him understand that. Believe it. So choosing her words carefully, she started simply and said, “Their names are Jacob and Cooper.”
He frowned a little and took a sip of his own champagne. “Family names?”
“My grandfathers,” she said, just a touch defensively as if she was prepared to go toe to toe with him to guard her right to name her sons whatever she wanted.
“That was nice of you,” he said after a second or two and took the wind out of her sails. “Go on.”
While around them people laughed and talked and relaxed together, a tight knot of tension coiled about their table. Jenna’s voice was soft, Nick leaned in closer to hear her and his nearness made her breath hitch in her chest.
“Jacob’s sunny and happy all the time. He smiles from the minute he wakes up until the moment I put him down for the night.” She smiled, too, just thinking of her babies. “Cooper’s different. He’s more…thoughtful, I guess. His smiles are rarer and all the more precious because of it. He’s always watching. Studying. I’d love to know what he’s thinking most of the time because even at four months, he seems almost a philosopher.”
His gaze was locked on her and Jenna could see both of her sons in Nick’s face. They looked so much like him, she couldn’t understand how he could doubt even for a moment that they were his.
“Where are they now?”
“My sister Maxie’s watching them.” And was probably harried and exhausted. “The boys are crazy about her and she loves them both to death. They’re fine.”
“Then why did you get tense all of a sudden?”
She blew out a breath, slumped back against the booth and admitted, “It’s the first time I’ve been away from them. It feels…wrong, somehow. And I miss them. A lot.”
His eyes narrowed on her and he picked up his glass for a sip of wine. Watching her over the rim of the glass, he swallowed, then set the flute back onto the table. “Can’t be easy, being a single mother.”
“No, it’s not,” she admitted, thinking now about just how tired she was every night by the time she had the boys in bed. It had been so long since she’d been awake past eight o’clock at night that it was odd to her now, sitting here in a restaurant at nine. This was what it had been like before, though. When she’d only had herself to worry about. When she hadn’t had two little boys depending on her.
God, how had she ever been able to stand the quiet? The emptiness in her little house? She couldn’t even imagine being without her sons now.
“But,” she added when he didn’t say anything else, “along with all the work, a single mom gets all the perks to herself, too. I don’t have to share the little moments. I’m the one to see them smile for the first time. To see them waking up to the world around them.”
“So since you’re not looking to share the good moments, that means you’re not interested in having me involved in the twins’ lives,” he said thoughtfully. “All you really want is child support?”
She stiffened a little. Jenna hadn’t even considered that Nick might want to be drawn into their sons’ lives. He wasn’t the hearth-and-home kind of guy. He was the party man. The guy you dated, but didn’t bring home to mom.
“You and I both know you don’t have any interest in being a father, Nick.”
“Is that right? And how would you know that?”
“Well-”
He inclined his head at her speechlessness. “Exactly. You don’t know me any more than I know you.”
“You’re wrong. I know that you’re not the kind of man to tie himself down in one place. That week we were together you told me yourself you had no plans to ever get married and settle down.”
“Who said anything about getting married?”
Jenna sucked in a breath and told herself to slow down. She was walking through a minefield here. “I didn’t mean-”
“Forget it,” he said.
Another waiter appeared, this time delivering a dinner that Nick had clearly ordered earlier. Surprised, Jenna looked down at the serving of breast of chicken and fettucine in mushroom sauce before lifting her gaze to his in question.
“I remembered you liked it,” he said with a shrug.
What was she supposed to do with that? She wondered. He pretended to not care anything about her, yet he remembered more than a year later what her favorite foods were? Why? Why would he recall something so small?
Once the waiter was gone, Nick started talking again. “So answer me this. When you found out you were pregnant, why’d you go through with it?”
“Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “You were alone. A lot of women in that position wouldn’t have done what you did. Giving birth, deciding to raise the babies on her own.”
“They were mine,” she said, as if that explained everything, and in her mind it did. Never for a moment had she considered ending her pregnancy. She’d tried to reach Nick of course, but when she couldn’t, she’d hunkered down and started building a life for her and her children.
“No regrets?”
“Only the one about coming on this ship,” she muttered.
He smiled faintly, laid his napkin across his lap and, picking up his knife and fork, sliced into his filet mignon. “I heard that.”
“I meant you to.” As Jenna used her fork to slide the fettucine noodles around her plate, she said, “Nick, my sons are the most important things in the world to me. I’ll do whatever I have to to make sure they’re safe.”
“Good for you.”
She took a bite of her dinner and, though she could tell it was cooked to perfection, the delicate sauce and chicken tasted like sawdust in her mouth.
“I’ll want a DNA test.”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ve already had the boys’ blood tests done at a local lab. You can send your sample in to them and they’ll do the comparison testing.”
